Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to revenue management in telecommunications systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a revenue management system with the means to manage risk associated with un-billable telephone calls and debt generated by calling activity.
Related Art
Generally, the need to monitor, control, record and provide detailed records of the usage of a telephone system in a controlled institutional environment is well recognized. It is common to utilize a controlled telephone system capable of monitoring outgoing telephone connections in many types of institutional environments, such as, but not limited to, penal institutions, military institutions, hospitals, schools, businesses, or specific types of government institutions. The reasons for monitoring and controlling institutional telephone systems are evident. To prevent such institutions from incurring unaccountable telephone costs, the institutions must either restrict access to outbound telephone lines or employ a debit system to charge the calling party for the outbound telephone call. Otherwise, unaccountable telephone costs would severally hinder the availability of the telephone systems in institutions.
However, it is often impossible to recover debt accumulated when no payment is received for completed collect calls that originate from a secure institution, such as a penal institution. The greatest portion of debt occurs because the called party cannot or will not pay the invoice. Collection efforts are made by the Local Exchange Carriers (“LECs”) billing the calls, but unpaid balances are eventually written off. In addition, most LECs are slow to report bad debt experience (as much as eighteen months in arrears). As a result, information provided by the billing process is useless in terms of preventing additional losses due to non-payment from the same individual.
Additionally, some small independent local exchange carriers (“ILECs”) do not offer billing services to their customers. As a result, any collect calls placed to these ILECS are un-billable. Similarly, with the advent of local competition, there are a great number of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (“CLECs”) offering local services to both residential and business customers. These carriers do not offer billing services to their customers. The only way to identify these customers is after billing is attempted and is returned as un-billable by a Billing Clearinghouse. However, this notification may not be received until two weeks after the collect call placement.
Also, on occasion, certain customers of LECs elect to place their telephone number on collect call block so that no telephone calls may be placed to that customer's telephone number. This is a common service provided by most LECs. Each LEC maintains an independent Line Information Database (“LIDB”) which stores all customer account options, such as collect call block. On occasion, a collect call block is placed on the called party's telephone in between the time the collect call is placed and when the call is submitted for billing. In these cases, the LEC that would have ordinarily billed the call can reject the call record, thereby making the telephone call un-billable.
There are currently systems known in the art for testing a telephone number before a collect call is placed to determine if it is billable, or validating a collect call to determine if it is billable.
One such system validates data obtained during a telephone call. The validation system includes a number of databases that correspond to each type of data that may require validation. The validation system sends each piece of received data to the respective database, which then returns a validation response. If all of the returned responses are positive, the validation system allows the telephone call to be connected. Furthermore, the validation system is capable of blocking calls to certain telephone numbers, checking credit card information, determining whether a collect call is billable by comparing the received dialed telephone number with an external Line Information Database, etc. Such a system does not compare the dialed telephone number to a plurality of local and external databases to determine if the collect call is billable. In addition, this system does not include a local database that records the billing history of previously dialed telephone numbers for use when determining whether a collect call is billable.
Another telephone call management system having credit and fraud management features discloses that when a telephone call is placed, the telephone number associated with the party to be charged for the telephone call is compared to a customer record database to retrieve the appropriate customer record. If the customer record indicates that the billing account is fraudulent, the telephone call is blocked (i.e., not connected). The system also continuously monitors and calculates the duration and cost of each telephone call while the telephone call is in progress and records this information in a threshold counter. If the threshold counter exceeds a predetermined magnitude, the system identifies the telephone call as potentially fraudulent.
Another such system is designed to detect and prevent the fraudulent use of telephone services. Upon placement of a collect telephone call, the system searches a database to determine if the dialed telephone number is contained therein. If the dialed telephone number is found in the database, the call is terminated. Alternatively, if the dialed telephone number is not found in the database, the collect telephone call is routed to the desired destination. Thereafter, if the called party refuses to accept the collect telephone call, the system adds the called party's telephone number to the database.
Collect telephone call validation systems that query whether a collect call is billable after a called party has accepted a collect telephone call are also known. Such a system first compares the called telephone number to a database of blocked, or prohibited, telephone numbers. If the called telephone number is contained in the database, the telephone call is terminated, and if it is not in the database, the called party is prompted to accept or reject the collect telephone call. If the called party accepts the telephone call, the system initiates further comparisons of the dialed telephone number versus BNS and LIDB databases to determine if the collect telephone call is billable. If the dialed telephone number is determined to be billable, the collect telephone call is then connected to the called party.
Still another telephone call processing system utilizes subscriber profiles to allow the system to more efficiently process telephone calls. These profiles allow individual subscribers to identify global calling preferences, thereby minimizing the volume of attempted calls placed to the subscriber by the call processing system. For example, if a calling party places a collect telephone call to a specific called party subscriber, and that subscriber has elected to block all collect calls, the system immediately notifies the calling party that the collect telephone call cannot be completed without first attempting to place the telephone call.
In view of the foregoing, a need clearly exists for an improved revenue management system for managing collect calls placed using an institution's telephone call system utilizing databases to establish accounts and to verify the status of called telephone numbers. In particular, a need exists in the art for a revenue management system capable of recovering losses which result from un-billable collect telephone calls, one that is capable of establishing debit accounts for a called party, and one that is capable of verifying if a collect call is billable by checking the telephone number against a plurality of telephone number databases.